31/01/2025
๐ณ In Forest School we continued our Chinese New Year celebrations with lots of lovely activities.
๐ As itโs the year of the snake we made our very own stick snakes by wrapping wool around sticks that we found in Forest School.
๐จ๐ณ We used rice and noodles in our Chinese themed mud kitchen, used flour to make Chinese images and bottles dipped in paint to make a blossom tree.
โ๏ธ We also enjoyed a very wet and muddy Forest School and had a lot of fun jumping in the muddy puddles.
31/01/2025
This week in Hedgehogs we have been celebrating Chinese New Year.
๐จ๐ณ As part of this celebration we had a special visit from one of our parents who talked to us about Chinese New Year celebrations. She explained why it is celebrated and how it is linked to the story The Nian Monster. Lots of lovely pictures were shared and opportunities for the children to ask questions and share their own knowledge on the subject by answering some of the questions.
๐งง We have explored our rice tray finding golden coins, then counted them out and put them into our red envelopes whilst looking at our numbers.
๐ฅ Retold the story โThe Great Raceโ with our animal tuff tray, then pretended to be the animals as we played a race game outside. We talked about orders of places in the race.
๐ We have used our fine motor skills to decorate snake pictures, a snake craft and demonstrated great hand, eye coordination skills as we made pasta snakes by threading the pasta on to the pipe cleaners and used paint to decorate and add colour to them.
โ๐ฝ We also used play dough to create different size snakes and used different shapes to make patterns or their backs. We did lots of rolling the play dough with our hands building up our muscles ready for writing.
๐ฎ Whilst exploring the red sand we took our time to copy some of our Chinese number symbols and had fun creating our own symbols and patterns.
๐ชญ We decorated our own fans with red and yellow paint and different sequins and materials.
๐ Explored our orange tuff tray. We squeezed and cut them up whilst adding water and we spoke about quantities as we filled our pots/jugs. Did you know that oranges are a good luck fruit in china because of its name being very close to wealth/gold.
๐ซ We had a tea party tuff tray where we explored different herbal tea bags and added water to our china tea set to create our own tea.
๐งฑ We worked together and used team work to build the Great Wall of China.
๐We have really enjoyed learning a new dragon song this week, where we pretended to be dragons and acted out lots of actions.
๐ก Our phonics sound of the week is โpโ. We have learnt the songโPuff out the candles on the pink pig cakeโ and looked at different items that begin with the letter โpโ. ๐ท
๐ฃ๏ธ Our Goldilocks words are Chinese New Year and Snake.
๐ Our book of the week is The Great Race.
31/01/2025
This week in Rabbits we have been celebrating the Luna New Year, and we have learned that 2025 is the Year of the Snake ๐The Snake symbolises growth, renewal, and adaptability, encouraging people to reflect on their paths, embrace change, and seek personal growth.
๐จ At the craft table this week we decorated paper plate snakes, using cotton buds dipped in different coloured paints.
We also used our hands, fingers, and plastic bottles to decorate a Blossom Tree.
๐๐ Our Teachers created 'The Great Animal Race' in the story area. We spoke about what animals were involved in the race, and if we had seen them in real life.๐๐
๐ We explored an orange inspired water tray, in which we squeezed and crused orange slices using our hands and a pestle and mortar.
๐ซ Some of our Rabbit friends have been serving the teachers pretend bubble tea while playing in the Garden. So for our tuff tray this week, we made real bubble teas! We poured water into teapots, and mixed it together with flavoured teabags. Once properly brewed, we poured our tea into cups, and popped in little bouncy balls, to recreate a bubble tea.
๐ช To accompany our playdough this week, we used a variety of tools including lolly sticks, rolling pins, gold coins and beads.
๐ During circle times this week, we have enjoyed listening to and dancing along to the song 'See the Dragon Dance'. We performed our best dance moves, and was given the opportunity to wear an Dragon Headdress while we danced!
๐จ๐ณ โGong hei fat choyโ to all of our friends Celebrating the Chinese New Year๐จ๐ณ
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks Words - Chinese New Year/ Celebrate/ Snake/Dragon
๐ต Song of the Week - See the Dragon Dance
24/01/2025
This week in Rabbits we have been talking all things weather. During circle times, we have discussed the different types of weather and how they make us feel.
๐จ At the craft table we have used bubble wrap to create big rain drop paintings. We also got messy by using our hands and fingertips to make a beautiful brightly coloured rainbow.
๐ We have been filling and emptying containers with different coloured rice using spoons and scoops. We realised that if we dropped the rice from height and it sounded like rain as it hit the tuff tray.
๐ The home corner was turned into a corner shop. We filled our trolleys full of food, and our teachers scanned our shopping. Then using money, the teachers helped us count out the coins.
๐ While in the garden, we took turns to roll balls and cars down the slide and ramps. We predicted which ball or car would be first and last, and modelled language such as fast and slow.
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks Words - Weather, Rain, Rainbow
๐ Story - We're Going on a Bear Hunt
24/01/2025
This week in Hedgehogs we have been learning about different types of weather.
๐ We have been creative making raindrops, rainbows and clouds out of playdoh adding cotton wool and rainbow pipe cleaners to help us.
๐งExplored with mixing different types of blue paints in our ice block water tray, seeing that when we mix white with the blue paint it makes the blue lighter.
๐ปWe have been retelling the story of โWeโre Going on a Bear Huntโ and then we used the wooden blocks build bridges to help the teddy bears cross the bridge whilst practising our prepositional language.
โ๏ธ In our rice tuff tray we brewed our own storm adding lightning bolts, rainbows, rain drops and clouds. We had to count out the correct number of each and then mix them all together.
โ๏ธ We have made colourful rainbow wind socks and shape sun catchers, which we tested out on the window and watched our creations light up.
๐ก Our phonics sound of the week is โtโ. We have explored different items that begin with this sound, played hide and seek โtโ objects and played a tambourine game, where when it stopped on one of us we chose what sound the item began with.
๐Whilst reading Weโre Going On A Bear Hunt the children demonstrated some lovely listening skills and were able to fill in lots of missing gaps to the story.
๐ฃ๏ธOur Goldilocks words were weather, clouds and rainbow.
17/01/2025
This week in Rabbits, we have been looking at and learning about Minibeasts.
๐ฆ We had a wonderful visit from ZooLab, who showed us different insects.
๐ท๏ธ๐๐ For our crafts this week, we have created spiders, caterpillars and snails using paint and a variety of tools.
๐ฆ Explored and looked for different insects in water trays and troughs. We collected them in nets and transported them to different trays.
๐ Some of the insects were trapped in sticky, muddy cornflour! We rescued them using spoons. It's was tough as the cornflour was very gloopy.
๐ธ We put our throwing skills to good use by throwing balls into a hula hoop themed spiders web. We waited out turn patiently and demonstrated our best throwing arms to hit the web.
๐ฆ We have enjoyed listening to The Very Hungry Caterpillar this week. At the end of the story, one of our friends asked; 'what is a cocoon?' Our teachers said this was a very good question! And explained what a cocoon is and its purpose. We then looked again at the story so we could see the change from catapillar to cocoon to butterfly.
๐ Story of the Week โThe Very Hungry Caterpillarโ.
๐ฃ๏ธGoldilocks Words Bugs & Insects.
17/01/2025
The theme in Hedgehogs this week has been Minibeasts.
๐ We have created ladybirds with red play dough and used our math skills to count out and take away spots.
๐ Explored and read โThe Very Hungry Caterpillarโ using props to retell the story. In red and green rice we made marks and filled cups with varying amounts. ,
๐ฆAt the craft table we made and decorated beautiful butterfly wands.
๐ชฒWe used our tick lists and magnifying glasses to explore our bug set up and find the bugs on our sheets.
๐ท๏ธHelping to develop our fine motor skills we used pinchers to catch our coloured spiders through the giant web without getting caught.
๐ Explored our bee tuff tray and used our numbered bees to help us with our number recognition. We spent some time lining them up in number order to 10.
๐ Made bug fossils by pushing them into our brown playdoh and looking and speaking about the imprint it had made.
๐ฆ We had fun washing the spiders down the guttering in our water tray singing along to Incy Wincy Spider as we did.
๐ธ We have been creative making our own bugs using different coulored shaped paper and glue.
๐ค Our phonics sound of the week is the lettter โaโ. We have looked at different words that begin with this sound, learnt the song โants on your armโ and used an apple rolling print to decorate our letter โaโ.
๐ฃ๏ธGoldilocks words are caterpillar, ladybird and butterfly.
๐Book of the week is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
14/01/2025
๐ ZooLab Visit ๐
As part of our Minibeasts topic this week the Rabbits and Hedgehogs had a visit from ZooLab. They showed us a selection of animals including a:
๐ Giant Snail
๐ท๏ธ Tarantula
๐ชณCockroach
๐ Snake
๐ธ Frog
We had the choice to touch some of the animals to see if they were slimy, soft, hard, bumpy or rough and learnt some facts about them. If we were a little unsure, we could just wave at them as they passed us by looking from a distance.
10/01/2025
This week in Hedgehogs we have been celebrating the New Year and have enjoyed seeing our friends and welcoming some new friends into our class.
๐จ We enjoyed making a big 2025 poster where we worked as a team to decorate it and explore firework patterns.
๐ In our colourful firework tray we used paint brushes to practise our mark making skills.
๐ช We had a New Years celebration set up where we explored different sounds with our instruments and tried to create firework display sounds. We had lots of fun dancing and singing on our stage with our colourful scarves.
๐๏ธDecorated our very own 2025 pictures using different materials and coloured paints.
โ๏ธ Talked about different quantities as we used our colourful rice tuff tray to empty and fill up a variety of containers.
๐ข We did some amazing counting as we placed our colourful pom-poms onto our numicons creating colourful patterns as we did.
๐ค Our phonics sound of the week is โSโ. We have been learning the song โThe Snake is in the Grassโ and looking at different words beginning with โaโ and practising these at circle times.
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks words - Happy New Year 2025
10/01/2025
๐ Happy New Year ๐
It's been lovely welcoming back our families after the Christmas break. The Rabbits have settled back into preschool beautifully and have been telling us all about the favourite activities and toys they enjoyed.
๐ซง We have enjoyed exploring a potion themed tuff tray this week. We paired coloured water with sequins and gems alongside squeezy pipettes, bottles, spoons, and bowls. The children scooped, poured, tipped, and trickled the water into the different vessels.
๐๐ปTo help develop and strengthen the muscles in our hands, we used our fingers and tweezers to move different sized pom poms into gold trays. We counted out pom poms into corresponding number trays.
๐ Play dough is always popular with the children, and is also a fun way to support early literacy skills. We have enjoyed squashing, cutting, stretching and pushing loose parts into the scented dough.
๐ Our role play area was turned into a shop. We filled our trolleys and baskets with food and one of our friends pretended to open a toy banana and said 'it's my baby's breakfast'.
๐จ We have had some beautiful artwork this week. Using lots of brightly coloured paints, we used brushes to create paintings to welcome in the New Year.
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks Words - Happy New Year
๐ Book of the Week - Shark in the Park and The Very Hungry Caterpillar
13/12/2024
๐ Christmas Party ๐
Today the children had a lovely time being entertained and meeting Father Christmas at our Christmas party.
Thank you from all of the team at Bean Road for our lovely cards and gifts. It is very generous of you and means a lot.
We would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We look forward to seeing you in 2025!
๐๐
06/12/2024
๐Christmas in Forest School ๐
This week we have been exploring all things Christmas.
๐ฒ We made our own Forest School Christmas tree from fallen branches and decorated them with Christmas decorations.
๐ Made jingle sticks by threading bells on to pipe cleaners and then wrapping them around sticks we had found.
๐ฅฃ We explored in the Christmas sensory water tray scooping and pouring the different ingredients to make a Christmas soup.
โ๏ธ Used Christmas loose parts to decorate small trees in the tuff tray.
๐ฅ In the mud kitchen we made Christmas puddings and mixed them up and dishes them out to our friends.
06/12/2024
As part of our Christmas celebrations this week, we invited a special adult in to join us at our Christmas Stay and Play sessions.
The children enjoyed sharing some of our Christmas activities with you and singing along to some Christmas songs.
Thank you to everyone for coming in.
โ๏ธ๐
๐ฝ๐๐๐
29/11/2024
This week in Hedgehogs we have been learning about road safety and continuing to explore our winter topic.
๐ฆ We explored our sensory traffic light rice tuff tray where we enjoyed making marks with our cars and making roads with pasta shapes.
โ๏ธ Using our snow play dough we created snowmen by rolling and shaping the dough, and then added different features using a selection of materials.
๐จ We spoke about what makes ice and used our paint on the ice cubes to experiment mixing colours.
๐ Created our own car wash and made our cars look sparkling clean.
๐ฒ We used our imaginations to create winter tree scenes with loose parts.
๐ฅ Explored traffic light colours and created our own road signs and traffic lights with our play dough. We learnt what the different traffic light colours mean and when you should go and stop. Our cars made fun marks in the play dough too.
๐ง We rescued our winter animals from the ice using different tools. We worked out the best way to save each animal and what were the best tools to crack the ice.
๐ฒ Using our dice at circle time we had fun taking it in turns to roll a number, recognise the number and then match it to the correct number spots. We all did really when at this activity.
๐ฅฃ As it has been so cold this week we made a yummy vegetable soup to eat at snack time. We helped prepare the vegetables and added them to the pot.
๐ This week during story time we have been learning the different parts of a book and what they mean.
๐ฃ๏ธ Our Goldilocks words are Title, Blurb and Spine.
29/11/2024
โ๏ธ๐ฆThis week in Rabbits we have continued with our winter theme, and have also discussed Road Safety.
During circle times this week, we spoke about how to stay safe when crossing the road and what the red and green lights mean.
๐จ We have been working on our fine motor skills this week by making marks on our paper. We have made big and small circles and long and short lines.
๐ง We painted cold ice blocks using paint brushes. The paint mixed together with the melted ice and created beautiful patterns in the ice.
๐ We had lots of fun exploring a mini car wash this week. Using bars of soap, brushes, and sponges, we lathered up the cars to give them a good wash.
๐ฃ While in the garden, we used wooden planks to create a long winding path. Together, we added more and more planks until the path snaked around the garden. Our teachers reminded us to use our 'aeroplane arms' to help us balance if we felt wobbly.
๐ขWe explored a posting activity on Thursday, which helped strengthen the muscles in our hands. We used tweezers to pick up different sized pom poms, and post them into the correct colour circle.
๐ฃ Goldilocks Words - Red means Stop. Green Means Go
๐ผ Song of the Week - This is the way we cross the road.
28/11/2024
โ๏ธThis week in Rabbits our theme has been Winter. We have been talking about the change in the weather as we are now in a new season; Winter. โ๏ธ
๐จ At the craft table, we made some beautiful winter inspired artwork. We created pictures using different textured paper in winter colours and glued them down using spreaders.
๐ผ We dipped cotton balls, which were held by pegs, into paints and made different patterns and marks on our page
๐ง๐ปโโ๏ธWe enjoy lots of physical play while at preschool, so this week we played on the climbing frame! We carefully walked along the balance beams, then went down the bumpy slide. Our teachers demonstrated how we could use our 'aeroplane arms' to help us balance if we felt wobbly.
๐๏ธ We painted on soft cotton wool sheets during a tuff tray activity. The cotton wool was soft and white, which reminded some of us of snow.
๐ณDuring our garden play it started to snow!! We watched as tiny snowflakes landed on our coats and hair. As we were exploring the outdoors, we noticed that water in our mud kitchen bowls had frozen and turned to ice! Our teachers explained that when it gets really cold, water turns into hard cold ice. We used the ice in our play, adding it to leaves and mud. It made a crunching, cracking sound as we hit it with spoons and whisks.
๐งOur teachers have noticed that we were struggling with washing our hands before we had our snack. So for circle time, Sarah helped us with a hand washing activity. Sarah sprinkled water onto our hands using a watering can 'tap' and demonstrated how to add soap to our hands. We then sang a song which reminded us how to wash our hands. Once our hands were super clean, we dried our hands using a paper towel. Good job Rabbits!! ๐ฐ
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks Words: Winter, Cold
๐ Story: The Gruffalo
22/11/2024
This week in Hedgehogs we have been learning about winter and the changes that we might see in our environment as the weather gets colder.
๐จ We have used the pipettes and water paint to explore mixing colours on our cotton wool snow sheet.
๐ปโโ๏ธ Explored some animals that like the cold and using our icy rice water we measured quantities.
โ๏ธ We have used our mark making skills in our sensory snow, forming patterns and letters.
๐งUsing our fine motor skills and pincers we rescued the snowballs from the ice tape, we then counted how many we had rescued at the end.
๐ซ We had fun baking gingerbread men in our role play bakers. We used the play dough and shape cutters to make the gingerbread men and then let our imaginations run wild to make our own creations.
โ๏ธ Enjoyed making snowy pictures with white paint, glitter and cotton wool balls.
๐ง One of our circle time activities was to count out syllables of words using our tap sticks, focusing on the words ice, polar bear and penguin.
๐ฃ๏ธ Goldilocks words: winter, ice and snow.
17/11/2024
๐ผThis week in Rabbits, we have been singing lots of Nursery Rhymes in celebration of Nursery Rhyme Week.
๐ At the craft table this week, we created a Twinkle Star Wand, using glitters and sequins. We then waved our stars as we sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
๐ We explored the water tray, which was home to fish and sea animals. We used nets to catch and collect them. We counted how many fish we had caught and sang '1,2,3,4,5....'
๐บ We enjoyed exploring a Poppy inspired play dough activity, where we squashed, stretched, rolled, and pinched play dough. We also used this time to ask the children if they had noticed any Poppies while they had been out with their families.
๐ถThe role play area was turned into a boat, floating along a pretend River. The children took turns steering the Boat, and sang 'Row Row Your Boat' while sailing.
๐ชWe decorated biscuits in recognition of Children in Need. We poured and spread icing over biscuits, and added smarties to represent the spots on Pudseys bandana.
๐ฃ Goldilocks Words - Poppy, Nursery Rhymes, Pudsey.